Do pro-lifers have an obligation to care for pregnant women and the lives of those after they born?

[Black_Rose]

A FETUS IS A HUMAN BEING. One abortion stopped is ONE PERSON saved, and that IS A TRIUMPH. If I were standing next to you I’d be yelling at you right now. Your intellectualized statements are merely meant to stir up the kind Catholics on this forum. Please take your racist statements and beliefs and go away. I know precisely what you are inferring, that the population that has the most abortions will produce the stupidest individuals. Eugenics proponent exposed!

Yeah, I’m a “racist” and a “eugenics proponent”, and The Bell Curve is my Bible. But seriously, I do not see how anything I said on this thread can be construed as racist.

I do not know anything about the mean or standard deviation of the distribution of intelligence of the pregnant women who seek abortions and their sexual partners; I would assume that it would be similar to the general population. Certainly intelligence and athletic ability are to some degree heritable, meaning that the variance of those traits are caused by genetic variations in the population. Even if a trait is highly heritable within a population, it does not necessarily imply that population differences are due to genetic causes because heritable only describes the amount of variance of a trait attributed to genetic variance within a group not between groups.

For those unable to comprehend my recent posts, I will restate my primary point. While there is uncertainty regarding the outcomes for an infant that was spared from abortion as he/she matures, it is inevitable that a significant proportion of such infants would face adversity and difficult challenges throughout their lives and they would not overcome such obstacles.

Well said! A human life has value. All of of us are born with only potential value, the opportunity for success. Granted, some have better potential than others, some squander their potential, some have very limited potential. Butl we are at least born, with the opportunity to enter the race and to fail or succeed. Abortion denies even an entry into the race. and a denial of even the opportunity to compete. There are millions of success stories, of those who overcome fantastic odds to survive and succeed.

What is the ratio of “success stories, of those who overcome fantastic odds to survive and succeed” to those that who are failures? I would suppose that the number is not greater than one and would be small. As one could see, I do not value opportunity or the race itself that much; I only value positive outcomes, not the process or a small possibility of beneficial outcomes occurring.

 

[TheRealJuliane]

Plenty of people have brought up (on a trillion other abortion threads) the point in the first paragraph, but I agree not enough have brought up the point in the second paragraph.

I have thought for a very long time that the responsible way to redress one’s own irresponsibility is to provide a responsible home (by others) for the product of one’s irresponsibility.

I know that’s wordy. You get my drift.

Well, I just got here so I haven’t read the trillion other abortion threads, pardon me please! I was only referring to this thread, which is the 2nd that I found on abortion.



Thanks for reading my post!

 

[TheRealJuliane]

**it is inevitable that a significant proportion of such infants would face adversity and difficult challenges throughout their lives and they would not overcome such obstacles. **
.

It is most certainly NOT inevitable, your base assumption is simply WRONG. And even if it were correct, EVERY life that God creates has a value not established by human beings. What is “adversity?” What are “difficult challenges?” My mother died when I was 10 and her loss has deeply affected my life in many negative ways. My father sold his blood to pay her hospital bills, and we did not always have enough to eat. There was sometimes “month left at the end of the money.” Daddy did his best to raise myself and my sister but there have been many struggles along the way. In fact, my mother had been told that she was too weak to bear children but my sister and I were born and were healthy (although my sister was a preemie, for that time, pretty small at 5 lbs.). Is that enough for you to justify that I should have been aborted?

Whose idea of “adversity” and “difficult challenges” shall we go with in order to allow abortions? These are eugenics code words for poor and usually minority groups, who are deemed too disadvantaged to reproduce. This is why I called you a eugenicist. You may not even recognize the language you are using and the insulting assumptions that you base your philosophy upon.

 

[Black_Rose]

It is most certainly NOT inevitable, your base assumption is simply WRONG.

I said that there is much variance among individuals, but it is inevitable that many individuals would suffer.

What is “adversity?” What are “difficult challenges?”

Some people would overcome difficult circumstances, but it likely that many would not triumph over them. For example, I said earlier:

A more probable outcome on the negative side would be that the infant would not have the intellectual capacity to complete secondary education and as a consequence that person would be unable to acquire the human capital that is valued in the job market. That person would need the perpetual assistance of benefactors, such as private charities, the state, or some combination of the two, beyond the services provide by a crisis pregnancy center in order to provide the material and financial resources to make ends meet. He/she would not seem to have any prospects for a decent life since he/she would likely be mired in poverty trapped in a world of despair and despondency while suffering the humiliating indignity of receiving private charity for subsistence.

Is that enough for you to justify that I should have been aborted?

I believe that the state should not interfere with a pregnant mother’s liberty to abort the fetus or to carry it to term. She might not be able to provide the resources to ensure that her child would have “freedom from want” or that the pregnancy would occur at an inopportune time where she would be unprepared to raise it without negatively affecting her livelihood. She should have the option of escaping from such a predicament if she does not want to assume the responsibility of raising a child.

 

[estesbob]

I believe that the state should not interfere with a pregnant mother’s liberty to abort the fetus or to carry it to term. She might not be able to provide the resources to ensure that her child would have “freedom from want” or that the pregnancy would occur at an inopportune time where she would be unprepared to raise it without negatively affecting her livelihood. She should have the option of escaping from such a predicament if she does not want to assume the responsibility of raising a child.

Why shouldnt have that right until the child is old enough to live on their own? After all circumstances change.

 

[TheRealJuliane]

I said that there is much variance among individuals, but it is inevitable that many individuals would suffer.

Some people would overcome difficult circumstances, but it likely that many would not triumph over them. For example, I said earlier:

I believe that the state should not interfere with a pregnant mother’s liberty to abort the fetus or to carry it to term. She might not be able to provide the resources to ensure that her child would have “freedom from want” or that the pregnancy would occur at an inopportune time where she would be unprepared to raise it without negatively affecting her livelihood. She should have the option of escaping from such a predicament if she does not want to assume the responsibility of raising a child.

You sidestepped my question. Answer please. Who is establishing the end members of “freedom from want?” Because my life certainly wouldn’t qualify as that. I’ve been poor. Is my life expendable because I didn’t have a certain standard of living? What in the world IS “freedom from want?” Tell me where that term came from. How can anyone or any government EVER guarantee freedom from “want?” Where the heck did you learn this stuff?

Catholics believe that EVERY SINGLE LIFE, EVERY TIME GOD CREATES IT, has intrinsic value in and of itself, merely BECAUSE GOD CREATED IT!!! Not based on any economic system, any arbitrary standards, any belief system, totally stand-alone!! That is why we honor God by NOT preventing those lives that HE grants to us to foster HIS children! Even those that other people might say are too handicapped to bring into the world, the “broken” people, have a value beyond what some people assign to them. GOD does not make mistakes, ever, ever, NEVER!

I think this is impossible for you to understand, you are making no attempt to accept that life has its own value period. There is no arguing with this tenet of our faith. If you cannot accept the value of human life NO MATTER WHAT, you are going to have a hard time being a Catholic, assuming you really want to be one.

 

[Black_Rose]

You sidestepped my question. Answer please. Who is establishing the end members of “freedom from want?” Because my life certainly wouldn’t qualify as that. I’ve been poor. Is my life expendable because I didn’t have a certain standard of living? What in the world IS “freedom from want?” Tell me where that term came from. How can anyone or any government EVER guarantee freedom from “want?” Where the heck did you learn this stuff?

I never said that those circumstances mandated abortion, but it can make it more acceptable.

If positive outcomes cannot be guaranteed for people after they are born, I see no reason to fervently protect their lives when they are fetuses inside the womb of their mother.

 

[JHow]

I never said that those circumstances mandated abortion, but it can make it more acceptable.

If positive outcomes cannot be guaranteed for people after they are born, I see no reason to fervently protect their lives when they are fetuses inside the womb of their mother.

Even a life of poverty or slavery is worth living. Don’t the kids read Solzhenitsyn any more? This is the “good news” at its most basic level.

 

[TheRealJuliane]

I never said that those circumstances mandated abortion, but it can make it more acceptable.

If positive outcomes cannot be guaranteed for people after they are born, I see no reason to fervently protect their lives when they are fetuses inside the womb of their mother.

In your world I would have never been born. You, sir or madam, are incredibly cold and calculating and I pray that God will change your mind on this issue. That is one of the worst things I have heard since reading about Margaret Sanger’s establishment of Planned Parenthood in order to eliminate black Americans after slavery. She too felt that people who were poor were better off not being born. Being poor more often than not meant that you were black or brown-skinned. Planned Parenthood still carries out her mission to this day, and has never distanced itself from her. In fact, they award the “Margaret Sanger Award” to a person they deem the most worth of that honor - 2 years ago, it was given to Hillary Clinton.

WHO DECIDES WHAT LIFE IS VALUABLE ENOUGH TO CONTINUE? I pray that it is never you. Perhaps you already make those sorts of decisions, though. Your coldness, like an actuary, saying blithely that unless a “positive outcome” can be guaranteed, a child may be aborted, is truly abhorrent.

 

[jmcrae]

Yeah, I’m a “racist” and a “eugenics proponent”, and The Bell Curve is my Bible. But seriously, I do not see how anything I said on this thread can be construed as racist.

Nor can I, for what it’s worth, but I’m really interested in knowing why you think that girls and young women who are pregnant out of wedlock are so much more likely to give birth to criminals and congenital idiots?

I do not know anything about the mean or standard deviation of the distribution of intelligence of the pregnant women who seek abortions and their sexual partners; I would assume that it would be similar to the general population.

Yes. They are young people engaging in what they think is normal behavior, and getting “caught” by means of a pregnancy. They are not unlike their peers who don’t happen to get “caught.”

Tell me - if a high school girl who is sexually active makes it through to her wedding day without becoming pregnant by accident, what makes her “more fit” to reproduce than the same girl, if she accidentally becomes pregnant at some point prior to the wedding?

Certainly intelligence and athletic ability are to some degree heritable, meaning that the variance of those traits are caused by genetic variations in the population. Even if a trait is highly heritable within a population, it does not necessarily imply that population differences are due to genetic causes because heritable only describes the amount of variance of a trait attributed to genetic variance within a group not between groups.

I’m not quite sure what this has to do with the question at hand. If the girl marries before getting pregnant, her child will inherit exactly the the same traits from her as the child of a married couple, as he would have inherited from her, if she had gotten pregnant at some point prior to the marriage. The man and the woman’s DNA don’t undergo any kind of improving transformation during the wedding ceremony - their kids will come out with the same innate talents and intelligences, either way.

For those unable to comprehend my recent posts, I will restate my primary point. While there is uncertainty regarding the outcomes for an infant that was spared from abortion as he/she matures, it is inevitable that a significant proportion of such infants would face adversity and difficult challenges throughout their lives and they would not overcome such obstacles.

I still have no idea why you think this is so.

What is the ratio of “success stories, of those who overcome fantastic odds to survive and succeed” to those that who are failures?

What “fantastic odds” are these kids overcoming?

 

[arvinsim]

If positive outcomes cannot be guaranteed for people after they are born, I see no reason to fervently protect their lives when they are fetuses inside the womb of their mother.

There will never be a guarantee like that in this world. No one can see the future. Furthermore, some people who started and lived most of the lives in good circumstances have been unfortunately struck by some disaster that changed their lives for the worse. What if they become physically or mentally disabled or become extremely poor? By your logic, we should have “seen” this and terminated their lives instead of becoming a burden to society.

Our job is to simply help people. I don’t think our job is to sort out which are “legible” to live or not. That’s why I admire pro-lifers. They are simply doing the job of helping other people(which is not an easy task mind you) while other people are busy debating whether this life will be a “burden” to society or not.

You mentioned you are a pessimist. I am sorry but if you are a Catholic, then you must believe that God requires us to be an optimist on the potential of every human being inside the womb.

 

[TheRealJuliane]

There will never be a guarantee like that in this world. No one can see the future. Furthermore, some people who started and lived most of the lives in good circumstances have been unfortunately struck by some disaster that changed their lives for the worse. What if they become physically or mentally disabled or become extremely poor? By your logic, we should have “seen” this and terminated their lives instead of becoming a burden to society.

Our job is to simply help people. I don’t think our job is to sort out which are “legible” to live or not.** That’s why I admire pro-lifers.** They are simply doing the job of helping other people(which is not an easy task mind you) while other people are busy debating whether this life will be a “burden” to society or not.

You mentioned you are a pessimist. I am sorry but if you are a Catholic, then you must believe that God requires us to be an optimist on the potential of every human being inside the womb.

Thank you. Believe me, we don’t qualify people if they choose life for their baby instead of death!! We don’t look at financial statements or do IQ tests to see if we should counsel the mother to keep her baby, or let her go into Planned Parenthood and murder that baby. And every single life saved is celebrated as a triumph of life, period. If God created that baby, inside that woman, at that time, then it is HIS baby and it has a right to exist, period, end of story. The baby’s life takes precedence over any conditions, except true life and death issues (almost never happens) because it is innocent and helpless. The 2 people that God used to help create this new life that belongs to HIM are now to subjugate their own lives and help the new little life grow and prosper.

Anyway, trust me, one baby saved is one saved!!!

 

[Black_Rose]

WHO DECIDES WHAT LIFE IS VALUABLE ENOUGH TO CONTINUE? I pray that it is never you. Perhaps you already make those sorts of decisions, though. Your coldness, like an actuary, saying blithely that unless a “positive outcome” can be guaranteed, a child may be aborted, is truly abhorrent.

Fine, I never advocated that I should be the one who made the decisions anyway. I said this earlier, a few post ago:

I believe that the state should not interfere with a pregnant mother’s liberty to abort the fetus or to carry it to term. She might not be able to provide the resources to ensure that her child would have “freedom from want” or that the pregnancy would occur at an inopportune time where she would be unprepared to raise it without negatively affecting her livelihood. She should have the option of escaping from such a predicament if she does not want to assume the responsibility of raising a child.

Thank you. Believe me, we don’t qualify people if they choose life for their baby instead of death!! We don’t look at financial statements or do IQ tests to see if we should counsel the mother to keep her baby, or let her go into Planned Parenthood and murder that baby. And every single life saved is celebrated as a triumph of life, period.

I only mentioned the heritability of intelligence not to recommend eugenic policies, but to point out that the outcomes of the infants saved from abortion are not within the control of the children themselves or their parents. The genes that one inherits are beyond anyone’s control and there is indeed some randomness in the genetic inheritance. While I have emphasized negative outcomes in genetic inheritance in this thread, the same process can give an infant a valuable genetic endowment where they have the superior intellectual or athletic ability which would enable them to have a prosperous life. Unfortunately, this scenario is not the median scenario, since it obviously is not ubiquitous because not everyone is intellectually or athletically talented (it is impossible for everyone to be athletically talent because athletic competitions reward superior relative outcomes), nor is it likely outcome, but such positive outcomes are merely outliers. Conversely, the unlucky may have such a disadvantageous genetic endowment where they would be unable to surmount adversity simple because they lack the capacity regardless of the opportunities presented to them or the amount of determination they possess.

Of course, not infant saved from abortion would be an academically successful or a failure once they reach maturity, but one can infer that for every 1,000 infants saved from abortion a significant proportion of them (about 10 to 20 percent) would have dismal outcomes such as this:

A more probable outcome on the negative side would be that the infant would not have the intellectual capacity to complete secondary education and as a consequence that person would be unable to acquire the human capital that is valued in the job market. That person would need the perpetual assistance of benefactors, such as private charities, the state, or some combination of the two, beyond the services provide by a crisis pregnancy center in order to provide the material and financial resources to make ends meet. He/she would not seem to have any prospects for a decent life since he/she would likely be mired in poverty trapped in a world of despair and despondency while suffering the humiliating indignity of receiving private charity for subsistence.

I would like to know the logic of not looking at even attempting to look at the financial statements of pregnant mothers. This does not mean that I would recommend it as a policy for crisis pregnancy centers, but seems rather imprudent not to look when compared to the standard practice of other industries where it is not only permitted, but recommended and even necessary and essential for good business practices. I could understand the sentiment of wanting to foster a comfortable, amiable, and empathetic environment for the pregnant women who seeks the council of crisis pregnancy centers by not eliciting them to divulge potentially embarrassing personal information. (Asking aide from a privately run foundation is embarrassing enough.) But one does have to concede that such financial information is valuable because its possesses predictive power concerning outcomes. Financial institutions issuing mortgages obviously take into consideration the finances and employment of mortgage applicants because it is predictive of their ability to be able to defray the mortgage for a considerable period of time involving at least one decade. Why isn’t parenthood a similar situation since it require a commitment of two decades and financial resources for the parent in order to give the child a favorable position once they reach adulthood?

 

[jmcrae]

Why isn’t parenthood a similar situation since it require a commitment of two decades and financial resources for the parent in order to give the child a favorable position once they reach adulthood?

Because the entire human race would die out in a single generation, if this were done.

Most people don’t get out of debt until they are in their forties - too late for successful childbearing. People of child-bearing age tend to be just starting out in their careers, and juggling school debts with mortgages. They are also young, naive, and inexperienced - they are likely to have poor decision-making skills.

But if you wait for them to gain wealth and wisdom, they will no longer be fertile enough to produce healthy children.

 

[Black_Rose]

Because the entire human race would die out in a single generation, if this were done.

Most people don’t get out of debt until they are in their forties - too late for successful childbearing. People of child-bearing age tend to be just starting out in their careers, and juggling school debts with mortgages. They are also young, naive, and inexperienced - they are likely to have poor decision-making skills.

But if you wait for them to gain wealth and wisdom, they will no longer be fertile enough to produce healthy children.

I do not understand how this would lead to human extinction within a single generation. It would mean that some people would have children later on and less children would be born. This does not mean extinction.

 

[jmcrae]

I do not understand how this would lead to human extinction within a single generation. It would mean that some people would have children later on and less children would be born. This does not mean extinction.

Children who are first-borns after the age of thirty five are far, far more likely to have Downs’ Syndrome and other extremely serious disabilities.

You were so worried about unmarried young women giving birth to handicapped children - they are a lot less likely to do so, than women over the age of thirty five who are pregnant for the first time.

 

[nilofc]

Cain once asked God…“Am I my brother’s keeper?”

We Catholics must answer with a resounding… “YES I AM !”

Exactly.

 

[Black_Rose]

You sidestepped my question. Answer please. Who is establishing the end members of “freedom from want?” Because my life certainly wouldn’t qualify as that. I’ve been poor. Is my life expendable because I didn’t have a certain standard of living? What in the world IS “freedom from want?” Tell me where that term came from. How can anyone or any government EVER guarantee freedom from “want?” Where the heck did you learn this stuff?

Look up the term “freedom from want”, it wouldn’t be that difficult.

But I am a very merciful and non-judgmental person despite my lukewarm views on abortion. It seems that while pro-lifers seem merciful to the “children” inside their mother’s uterus, they do not seem that merciful to others outside of the womb such as the unemployed.

What I dislike about the pro-life movement, as I said before, is that they do not consider the potential negative outcomes of the fetuses that they save as they mature. They consider it a triumph without considering the inevitable failure that some of them would experience. The remedy is attenuate and reduce the negative variance of potential outcomes. The nature of this suggestion is inherently egalitarian because reducing the negative variance of outcomes would mean reducing overall variance, ceteris paribus, hence a more equal distribution of outcomes. If the means for accomplishing this would including reducing the positive variance through redistribution, then it would further reduce the variance in outcomes.

This is actually motivated by a genuine concern for the welfare of people beyond what happens to them during pregnancy and the first year of life.

 

[jmcrae]

Look up the term “freedom from want”, it wouldn’t be that difficult.

But I am a very merciful and non-judgmental person despite my lukewarm views on abortion. It seems that while pro-lifers seem merciful to the “children” inside their mother’s uterus, they do not seem that merciful to others outside of the womb such as the unemployed.

The Society of St. Vincent de Paul helps the unemployed to be able to remain in their homes by paying their bills and buying their groceries, if their funds permit.

If the family does become homeless, then Inn from the Cold provides temporary housing for families with children.

This is actually motivated by a genuine concern for the welfare of people beyond what happens to them during pregnancy and the first year of life.

Which the Church surely does do.

I still have no idea why you think unmarried women are so much more likely to give birth to children with poor potential.

 

[Black_Rose]

The Society of St. Vincent de Paul helps the unemployed to be able to remain in their homes by paying their bills and buying their groceries, if their funds permit.

If the family does become homeless, then Inn from the Cold provides temporary housing for families with children.

Which the Church surely does do.

I still have no idea why you think unmarried women are so much more likely to give birth to children with poor potential.

Temporary, not permanent solutions.

Ok, so where did I say that unmarried women are more likely to give birth to children with poor potential? Regarding their innate intelligence, I said this:

I do not know anything about the mean or standard deviation of the distribution of intelligence of the pregnant women who seek abortions and their sexual partners; I would assume that it would be similar to the general population